The structure functions F1 and F2 of the hadronic tensor of vector mesons are obtained at order $1/N$ and strong coupling using the gauge/gravity duality. We find that the large $N$ limit and the high energy one do not commute. Thus, by considering the high energy limit first, our results of the first moments of $F_1$ for the rho meson agree well with those from lattice QCD, with an important improvement of the accuracy with respect to the holographic dual calculation in the planar limit.